Route 3 was boring.
Birds and rats everywhere, it was like Manehatten really. Occasionally there was a ekans, though I had a bit of an aversion to poison types as well.
Fucking bitch Scarlet...
That was a thought that worried me. If I was here would any of them be as well? I really didn't care if Silver Claw was here. His whole goal had been to try and save his father, and being dead and now in a different dimension that wasn't likely to be a thing.
Maybe he would just be a family man if his family was alive and well, though that made me wonder if the Charizards really were descended from Forgescale.
The others though. All of them were twisted and warped inside expect Nocturne, though she had become Dawn in reincarnation..... so that was kinda weird.
Blood Tail, Scarlet, Razor Wing, and Claymore on the other hand, if they were here as humans, I might be tempted to kill them. If I found any of them as Pokemon, I would catch them then drop the balls they were in into a building foundation some where.
That was neither here or there to be honest and my first day out had me learning how Cleffa worked.
She was an angry little thing, seemed my speech had worked with her and she would happily smash the shit out of anything that decided to come out of the tall grass.
The problem with that was she was getting hurt, a lot, and I had blown through most of my potions pretty early on caring for her.
She was a little tank, but she was not very fast and her attacks were weird.
Copy cat was kinda useless unless something attacked her with a special move, and most of the time whatever move that was the user was immune or barely hurt by, which made the move relatively useless. Though I could see a few uses for it that might surprise another trainer.
Pound was a good strong attack with no finesse though it didn't need it.
Splash was...... why did a cleffa even have that move?
I decided to camp for a few days in a designated spot for it and start on the sort of training I was used to. I had made basic Royal Guard into something that other units feared I could do the same with some pokemon.
Right?
Turned out it was not as simple as that. There were a lot of things I didn't consider.
For starters I was ten and a human. I also didn't have access to any sort of training ground, nor did I have easy access to a mess hall. I wasn't too worried about the last one as I did look up the best meals of pokechow for a cleffa and had supplies for that. Dealing with food was not something I was unfamiliar with in raising foals, but at the same time both Luna didn't really need to eat food at the end and I ate anything, so I was a few thousand years rusty on my cooking skills.
I knew there was basic pokechow, for those with pokemon as pets, but my mother and grandmother showed me how to prepare a proper meal catered to the pokemon I had, which required a lot of berry picking. Cleffa wasn't something either of them knew however so I had to do my own research to find a decent mix. Any other pokemon I picked up I would need to study as well.
Still after a few days both Cleffa and I were getting the hang of it. Running , push ups fire drills target training we were both building endurance and strength, things I was used to and that I used to use, but I needed to figure out a way to do speed training. For now though I was working Cleffa into a tank. She didn't have to be fast, she just had to survive what was hitting her and deal a blow that was twice as hard.
That was a combat style I knew well.
I had hoped to find a grass type or a manky along route 3 but I didn't so much as glimpse either, I guess the birds and the rats drove them off. I was tempted to grab a spearow for my team just for a bit of speed, but I decided against it. A spearow and later a fearow would be a bad match up again a rock gym. I considered trying my luck with just Cleffa , but after a few losses to random trainers along the route in battles where Cleffa got overwhelmed with numbers I decided I needed something else. Water types were out as were poison. I didn't want a jiggly puff and route 3 was full of them.
I considered bypassing the gym and heading to route 2 to see if I could find a bellsprout or a oddish, maybe even go for the ground badge first instead of the rock badge. I didn't want a poison type but I needed a grass type. Route 4 was right out simply due to the fact I wanted no water types.
This was one of the main reasons I wanted a bulbasaur to start all three of the closest gyms to my home town were weak to grass types, and bulbasaurs were beasts.
Still I didn't get a bulbasaur I got a cleffa, and I wasn't going to change my plans just because things got a little more difficult.
After about a week of camping I did a foraging session for various berries to sell and made my way into Pewter city. I got Cleffa healed up at the center, called home, took in the sights and then set out down route 2.
My plan was loosely head all the way down to Pallet Town training cleffa and seeing if anything caught my eye.
I could go with the standard mentality of catch anything that moved, but honestly caring for even six pokemon was a chore, I watched my mother and grandmother do it and it seemed excessive.
My grandmother only caught what she wanted and trained them for war. My mother caught everything, but released what she didn't want back into the wild, her training having made the pokemon stronger.
My mother's method seemed fairly common, though I had my hangups obviously it was something I wouldn't mind trying. But first I needed a grass type. If nothing else I was more used to training large groups than single individuals. Cleffa needed someone to spar with who could take it. Bell sprout were supposed to be quick, but I decided to go with what I knew and grab an oddish.
Brute force and survivability were my best skills. Why knock what worked?